Tuesday, 2 June 2015

Limits to Church Growth - Part 2

The Reproduction of Enthusiasts

In a previous post I investigated two barriers to church
growth: Lack of supply of religion by the church; and lack of demand for
religion in society [1]. For those barriers to be removed a church needs to take
action to increase recruitment and not take demand by the population for
granted. In particular, the church needs to create
demand for religion, “to seek and save the lost”, to engage with the population
and convince those who don’t want the religion to embrace it.

In this blog a model is presented where the church creates
demand by contacting unbelievers and persuading some to accept Christ, and thus
become Christians. This is the limited enthusiasm model, which has been
published and tested with data a number of times [2]. Here, it is
re-interpreted in terms of supply and demand. However creating demand brings about another barrier to
church growth, one connected with the behaviour of the Church members involved
in demand creation, the enthusiasts of the church.

Limit 3: Lack of Enthusiasts

Enthusiasts are the name given to those in the church who
actively engage in spreading the gospel, in particular in recruitment to the
church. These enthusiasts are the ones “supplying religion” to society by “creating
demand” through their persuasive actions within that society. As such, unlike
the previous models [1], supply matches demand. However not all the church are
such enthusiasts, thus supply is proportional to the number of enthusiasts,
rather than the whole church.

The reason not all the church are enthusiasts is that few
Christians remain enthusiasts throughout their lifetime. The most effective
enthusiasts are new converts, as these have the most contacts amongst
unbelievers. After a time they settle in to church life and exchange their old
unconverted friends for new converted ones. As such many eventually cease to be
enthusiasts. Even if they keep unconverted friends, those friends get used to
the new religious ways of the convert, whose witness becomes less effective.

Added to that, some enthusiasts also lose enthusiasm for the
faith; perhaps the novelty has worn off, or the new religion has not met their
expectations. Yet again it means that enthusiasts do not remain so for ever.

The model is expressed in system dynamics form in figure 1
[3]. Feedback loop Rrepresents the action of the
enthusiasts supplying the church’s beliefs by creating demand in society. Loop B1is the reaction of society, the extent to which society
really demands religion. B2 represents the fraction
of enthusiasts who become inactive over time. The model is similar to that of
the spread of a disease with the enthusiasts the “infected” Christians.

Figure 1: Limited Enthusiasm Model

For supply and demand to match, assuming contacts between
enthusiasts and society are uniformly mixed, then the enthusiasts become less
effective as the number outside church falls, making potential converts harder
to find. Thus the loss of
enthusiasts creates a barrier to growth as that loss eventually exceeds the
ability of enthusiasts to reproduce themselves from the diminishing pool of
unbelievers. The result is that not all outside church are converted, and
church reaches a limit much less than the size of the population.

Let a church number 60 people initially, with 5 of them
enthusiasts. Let the number outside church be 2000.The results are in figure 2. The enthusiasts peak about time
20 (curve 3), after which church growth slows (curve 1). Church stops growing
at 540, because it has run out of enthusiasts, with over 1,500 in society
remaining unconverted, curve 2. The
inability for enthusiasts to reproduce themselves is a barrier to church
growth.

Figure 2: Church Growth Limited by Behaviour of Enthusiasts

The results in figure 2 illustrate the epidemic metaphor,
and are a pattern seen in a range of social phenomena, such as the spread of
protests, ideologies, rumours, languages or fashions [4]. If a contagion,
physical or social, spreads evenly, i.e. without targeting the susceptibles,
and with a fixed contagion strength, then growth will always be limited. The
enthusiasts will end up at zero.

If people leave the church, and in the future become open to
joining again, then it is possible for enthusiasts to remain non-zero, but the
barrier to growth remains. The church still can’t reproduce enthusiasts fast
enough.

Removing the Growth Barrier

To remove, or raise,
the barrier to growth a number of options are open to the church:

The enthusiasts could selectively target those who are
outside the church, spending more time with them rather than with church
members. Practically this may prove difficult as time does need to be spent on
believers in a growing church for their nurture and retention. This gives enthusiasts
limited time for participation in non-church groups. Also, actually making
contact with those outside church can be a problem if there are groups of
people hostile to religion, and whose lives never overlap with anything church
related. Whatever the strategy, as church grows, the people remaining outside become
increasingly harder to reach.

The enthusiasts should also reproduce themselves from
inactive church members, not just new converts. This can be done by training,
raising expectations of church membership, and especially by renewal of
Christians in the Holy Spirit. This approach raises the barrier, but there is
still a limit to church growth, albeit higher [5].

Enable Enthusiasts to remain enthusiastic for longer. There
could be many strategies, but if the church could just appreciate and encourage
enthusiasts, rather than putting them down then ….. Enough said!

Widen the pool of susceptibles by extending the church’s
influence into another area, perhaps a through a church plant. This strategy quickly
generates more demand, a new epidemic, and keeps up the flow of new
enthusiasts. This is a standard strategy for newer churches, those yet to be
established and become widespread. Unfortunately the unconverted people in the
original community remain unconverted. Not ideal as the church is meant to seek
and save the lost, not just grow!

The enthusiasts should seek to increase their effectiveness,
so the “contagion” is no longer fixed but can become larger. This is not so
much about training enthusiasts but increasing their spiritual life. More life
gives more growth, and thus gives even more life. This is the stuff of revival,
outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and will be examined in the next blog on limits
to church growth.